During the banquet and the subsequent proceedings the virtuous Russell had been silent and distrait. Though restored to the arms of the best of wives, still he was not happy. There was yet something wanting. And what was that? Need I say that it was the lost package with the precious bonds? Ah no, for every one will surely divine the feelings and thoughts of this sorrowful man. And he in his abstraction had been trying to think what could be done; for the bonds were lost to him: they were not in the place where he had concealed them. What that place really was he now knew only too well. Had that fiend Rita found them? Perhaps so--yet perhaps not. On the whole, as a last resort, he concluded that it would be best to appeal to Don Carlos. His face indicated goodness, and his whole treatment of the party invited confidence; there surely he might meet with sympathy, and if the package had been found by any of the Carlists it might be restored. And so, as the uproar subsided, Russell arose, and walking toward Don Carlos, suddenly, and to the amazement and amusement of all present, flung himself on his knees, crying, "A boon! a boon, my liege!" These preposterous words had lingered in his memory from some absurd reading of his boyhood. Don Carlos smiled. "What does he say?" he asked. Harry came forward to act as interpreter. Russell now told all. Harry knew in part the fortunes of the bonds after they had left Russell's hands; but then they had again been lost, so that he could not tell what had finally become of them. Of his own part in finding them, and then concealing them again, he thought best to say nothing. Ashby, however, had something to say which was very much to the purpose. It seems that Dolores had found the bonds, had kept them, and had finally handed them over to Ashby for safe-keeping. He at once concluded that they were Katie's, and was waiting for a convenient opportunity to restore them. The opportunity had now come. This was his simple story, but as it was told to Don Carlos in Spanish, Russell did not understand one word. "Where are they now?" asked Don Carlos. "Here," said Ashby, and he produced the package from his coat-pocket. "Give them to me," said Don Carlos. "I will arrange it all. Do you know, gentlemen, this is the happiest moment of my life. I seem like a kind of _Deus ex machina_ coming in at the right time at the end of a series of adventures to produce universal peace and harmony." "I hope and trust," said Ashby, "that 'Your Majesty' may be the _Deus ex machina_ for all Spain, and interpose at last to produce universal peace and harmony here." "Senor," said Don Carlos, "you talk like a born courtier; yet at the same time," he added, in a solemn tone, "what you have just said is the high hope and aspiration of my life."